The Torn Cloud and the Rainbow
by pemberleys
Summary: There is a teahouse in the 1st Ward that even the White Reaper visits. Arima/OC (Discontinued)
1. 0

**S** poilers abound if you haven't read TG:re and Jack.

* * *

There is a forest. There is the whiff of pine needles in the air, and there is the sound of faint laughter from inside the teahouse. There is a breeze blowing through the trees, and his eyes watch the gentle swaying ripple through the forest before it comes to him in a cold caress, and the light of the lantern burning beside him wavers for just a moment.

His vision of the polished wooden steps he is seated on go dark. In another moment the candlelight recovers, and suddenly, there is also a girl.

"Oh," She's holding a lantern as well, and her surprise is illuminated in a gradient of yellow and orange. Jet black hair is swept up in what he recognizes as a formal style, her slender neck rising from the many folds of a kimono. She sets down her light to clasp her hands in front of her and bow lightly, "Good evening, isn't it cold outside?"

She must be one of the staff, Arima thinks. A bit young to be serving in an old teahouse like _Sugi,_ but he makes no comment on this. _A bit young_ is nothing unusual for him. "I'm alright, thank you. I needed to step out for a moment."

All it takes is one turn of her head, one glance to the interior. It's probably discourteous to make one of Tokyo's most respected teahouses stay open after hours; raucous laughter and the sound of glasses clinking are what come out of a bar, not establishments like _Sugi._ But all the girl does is bow again. "If you say so."

She excuses herself with a smile. He breathes in the night air, but the girl comes back not long after, a tray in her hands. Two small plates; a cup of green tea, gray wisps rising into the air, and a cube-shaped rice cake. He's already had this set, and he deduces that this tray is of her own plating, judging by how it lacks—by the slightest few centimeters—a perfect symmetry in its arrangement.

"For you," The girl says as if it isn't obvious—

"I heard you were given a promotion. Congratulations."

–which is decidedly less obvious. She must've bumped into Marude, because only he would be so talkative. Arima takes the platitude with an obliging nod and an uttered _thank you_ , but is surprised by the sincerity in her eyes, and when she decides to sit beside him on the walkway after she sets the tray down.

"It seems like it might rain, one of these days," she says out of nowhere after a moment, staring upwards. "Maybe even later tonight, if the forecasts are correct."

All he says is _hmm._ There are clouds hiding the moon, even now, in the dead of night; their outlines are gray with their edges frayed like torn cotton against an inked out canvas.

"Hope you brought an umbrella."

His eyes don't stray from the sky as he reaches for the tray. The teacup is warm in his hands. "Ah, no," he says without thinking, a furrow in his brow.

And naturally their conversation—if Arima could even call it that—is cut short.

The rest of the squad is piling out the teahouse, Marude plucking him from his seat and the girl smoothly moving the tray and herself aside to let them pass. There is no time even for a real goodbye; all he can do is spare her a glance over his shoulder, even if he feels Marude's eyes on him, _hurry up kid, we've got to get back to 7_ _th_ rattling off his lips.

But still she smiles, waves.

 _Please come back again,_ she says, and all he can do is stare back wordlessly, knowing he can't.

* * *

Later it does rain. He watches the droplets pelting against the windows of the CCG branch office, and for a moment he thinks of forgetting his umbrella, and torn gray clouds; pine trees and unfinished cups of green tea.

* * *

Notes:

Arima needs a hug. This is short - about eleven parts long only, if all goes to plan. Constructive criticism, as always, is welcomed.

(1) _Sugi_ is the name for Japanese cedar.

(2) I'm going to be fiddling a bit with the timeline, but I'll be sure to point out when.


	2. 1,1

Part I: **Heaven**

The torn cloud, the rainbow  
now gleaming in the sky  
and the field enveloped  
in a beacon of rain and sun.

* * *

It is only by chance that he finds himself in front of Sugi again.

The teahouse is not two blocks away from the CCG's main office. Taishi and Aki had invited him to dinner to a restaurant not four blocks away, like they always did every few months or so since their wedding, and he'd found no real reason to refuse; the park Sugi is in lies between the two waypoints – he'd cut through it to save time on his way back to headquarters, but then it began to drizzle, and before he knew it, there he stood in Sugi's entryway.

It is an old building, built of wood and stone, a beacon in the middle of the night – the sight is warm and homely, and something in his mind stirs with memory. Two lamplights guard the footpath leading up to Sugi's wooden steps, and he remembers he'd sat there as a teenager and gazed up at the moon, once.

His footfalls on the stepping stones are muffled by the sound of the rain bearing down on the surrounding pine forest. His eyes are fixed on Sugi's entrance, and unconsciously he envisions his sixteen year old self waiting on the stairs not seven feet before him.

He is shorter, more youthful. Hair still a vivid blue, not a single snowy strand in sight – his head is stuck in the clouds, completely unknowing of what would come soon after – whether it was the rain, the girl he'd had to murder while in high school, or Taishi's heartbroken realization that their classmate had been a ghoul.

Eventually Arima moves past his apparition to stand before Sugi's open doors. The inside is lit in gentle shades of orange and yellow, just as he remembers, and the overwhelming smell of freshly brewed tea fills his senses as he comes inside. A man in a kimono is waiting for him, all raven hair and friendly amber eyes that seem to blend into Sugi's interior. He bows, "For one?"

"Yes, thank you," Arima utters. The rain continues around them, but the atmosphere in Sugi is no less welcoming. He is shown to a table with a view of the gardens; on the other side of the room through glass windows is a view of the park. There is only one other patron at this time of the night, though they are tucked into a different corner of the teahouse.

Soon after he is seated, the man who'd shown him in smiles apologetically. "Please excuse me for a moment," he bows again, "I believe there's something that needs my attention. Someone will be here to take your order once you're ready, though."

He disappears into a set of sliding doors. Then there are the voices:

"Megs! It's been _forever—"_

"Seriously? You didn't have to come in tonight! Especially with this weather, Akiko—"

"Well I doubt you would have forgiven me if I didn't come straight away."

"Ssh! We still have patrons over, pipe down."

"This late—?"

The voices are suddenly hushed; he surmises, however, that the man from earlier is 'Megs,' and there is a new visitor 'Akiko.' He pays no more attention to the relation between the two people—yet the 'someone' Megs had promised to take his order turns out to be a woman. She is dressed just as formally, but her hair is damp and a little bit wild around her head, and her face is flushed like she'd just run through the rain.

Akiko.

"Good evening," She says with the voice of the woman from earlier, and his suspicion is confirmed. She is taller than the average woman, long blonde hair pushed past her shoulders and tucked behind her ears. And yet the smile she wears seems familiar, and her eyes are just as warm and bright as—

 _Ah_. Siblings. It would explain the resemblance, and the familiarity he'd overheard in their voices.

They stare at each other. Uncannily enough, it seems as if she has come to her own realization—she blinks at him, once, twice, before her mouth opens to quizzically utter, "Excuse me, but have we met?"

"I don't believe so," Arima says. What?

The woman— _Akiko—_ laughs. It's a generous, hearty thing; not at all condescending, but born out of genuine amusement, it would seem. "Forgive me, but I never forget a face. How strange! I'm rather sure it was here in Tokyo as well."

It would not be impossible. He had met an innumerable amount of people over the years; his operations in the CCG had taken him far and wide through the wards. But all those faces blur into an incomprehensible amalgamation in his mind; the only people he has little difficulty in remembering are either his colleagues or ghouls he has hunted for more than a month.

"Please indulge me," She continues with a small smile, "my brother tells me you're not one of the regulars. Do you remember the times you've been to this teahouse?"

There is little reason to be having this conversation except for the request of a woman he does not even know, despite her claiming to the contrary. Yet all he reads in her face is sincerity, and he finds that he equally has little reason to refuse her. "Once. Six years ago."

"I must've been...sixteen, then? And in Tokyo, obviously," she muses out loud, though the latter part she mostly says to herself. But apparently she remembers something, because she is suddenly straightening her spine, discreetly looking him up and down. She grins and claps her hands: "Oh! It's you! _You_ were that boy! The one that was with all the investigators."

The words still him. This time, it's _his_ turn to blink at her in silent amazement.

It comes to him in a flash—the girl with the lantern; forgotten umbrellas and gray clouds, pine trees and the tea she had brought him. He had been too busy looking up, and the night had been too dark for him to get a proper look at her.

Still. _That_ was her?

"Do you remember me now?"

"I…" He is just as dumbfounded as she is at the massive coincidence that has brought them together. "…I do."

She seems happy at this. Smiling to herself, tucking a stray lock of hair that had escaped from behind her ear. "Well, my family owns Sugi, so I'm glad you decided to patronize us again." She says with a chuckle.

His eyes shift away from her, coming instead to look at the garden. There is no real need to sound so grateful. "I was in the area."

"And it would seem you've forgotten your umbrella again," The woman bows. "We would be more than happy to lend you one; you're an investigator for the CCG, right? It would be easy to send someone over to the main office and pick it up when you're done with it, if you can't spare the time to return."

"You remember much."

"It was a memorable night. It wasn't every day that father stayed open late to accommodate some of Tokyo's finest."

When he continues to say nothing, she looks at him with twinkling eyes. "I'm a people person. Didn't I say I never forget a face? Now then, I can bring you something if you've made up your mind already."

* * *

True to her word, she brings him the tea he asks for, but there is little more conversation; _got my hands full, sorry,_ she says with a lofty wave of her hand and a not-so-sorry grin, as if he'd even asked. A different waitress brings him the second cup of tea he orders when the rain continues with no sign of letting up. She is overly formal when she recognizes his black suit and the CCG pin he wears, and stays mostly silent with a nervous look in her eye.

He stays until the very end, lost in thought and the sounds of a nearly empty teahouse stuck in the middle of a rainstorm, the end being when he notices the same nervous waitress discreetly close up shop around him. As he is readying to leave, he thinks of Akiko popping out of another set of sliding doors, all smiles and warm laughs, _please come back again_ or something to that effect uttered in her easy voice.

But all that greets him is her brother, near the entrance; as promised, there is a sleek black umbrella, large enough to comfortably fit three people, in his hands.

"I'm Megumi, by the way," The man says. He looks older than Akiko, oddly named but seemingly proud of it with his amiable smile, "of the Kobayashi family. Thank you for all your hard work with the CCG. Your kind will always be welcome in Sugi."

Arima wonders if the sentiment comes from Megumi alone or from both siblings. He has no clear answer; Akiko didn't seem to react much to his being an investigator. He steps out into the walkway: when he glances at the wooden steps, he finds that his mind has already conjured a companion for his younger self.

Now two apparitions are stargazing, sitting side by side; now his mind has filled what his old memories can't, and Akiko's face is illuminated with starlight, eyes wide open at the sky. His mind has difficulty remembering the exact style or shape her hair had been in, but he knows for a fact that it had been a deep, dark black. It seems as if she's dyed her hair blonde, which is odd, because he had thought it natural upon first seeing her.

The rain falls in sheets. The smell of wet earth wafts the farther and farther he walks from the tea house; the main office will be cold when he returns, and there will still be a few people milling in the offices to see him. He could leave the umbrella with the woman manning the reception, ask her to call Sugi the next day. It would be over and done with by just a few words, one simple, polite request.

And yet.

And yet he rewraps the umbrella when he steps in the main office's elevators. He stows it in the corner of his office, standing against the wall as if it were one of his unsheathed quinques. Hirako comes in with the finished reports, and as Arima gives the immaculate accounting of his squad's operation that day a passing glance, he resolves to come back to Sugi tomorrow.

It will be a change of pace from the CCGs cold mechanical air and white tiles; in Sugi he will seat himself once again and sip more of their green tea, relaxing in the company of pine trees.

* * *

She isn't there when he arrives.

This is the first thing he is told, when he darkens the doorway of Sugi on that Friday's warm afternoon; Megumi takes the borrowed umbrella and hands it to another staff member, and then smiles, as if _she_ is the real reason for his entire squad's surprise when he'd told them he was leaving the office at five, just like the rest of them.

"You see," Megumi is saying, "she helps me manage the teahouse. I can't tell you her shift because she doesn't really have any."

The assumption makes the investigator raise one unconcerned brow. "I'd like a table, please."

"Of course."

He is given the same table from the night before. The interior garden is lit by the waning afternoon sun, and only then can he witness the planted wisteria tree's beauty, even with the few wilting flowers it has left on its long vines, the single tree amongst unrolled ferns and moss-covered rocks. The teahouse is considerably busier now, with cheery patrons young and old.

He stays shorter than he had meant to – the tea is still bitter against his tongue, still balanced well against the bowl of sweet fruit he is also served, but the atmosphere in Sugi is different at night; the next time he comes back, he knows it will be with the moon raised in the sky.

Megumi is surprised when he sees him return to Sugi's entrance after just a half-hour. "You're always welcome…"

"Arima," He supplies without pause. A name for a name. "Arima Kishou."

The man smiles. "You're always welcome here, Arima-san."

He slips on his shoes and steps onto the walkway once again. The park is golden from the early rays of sunset. Water drips from the trees; the ground glistens from a light sprinkling of rain. The sun is accompanied by thin clouds, and Arima almost comes away from a visit to Sugi without having to see her, but somehow they manage.

She is coming up the entryway; he is leaving, and their gazes meet for just that protracted second.

She stands still among the stepping stones, dressed in her traditional clothes; almost the picture of a noblewoman in one of those old woodblock prints, if not for the tenderness in her face and her blonde hair. One hand is lifting the hem of her kimono and revealing her socks and her raised sandals, impractical things to be wearing with the summer rains already underway. Her other hand is clutching to her chest a package wrapped in silk, and she looks at him with no sign of surprise to be found in her pleasant smile, "Leaving already?"

There is no expectation in her voice at all, just mild teasing—she speaks like they're good friends, like he is a regular tea-drinker at her family's shop; she probably doesn't even know his name, and she hasn't even bothered to properly introduce herself to him. There are those eyes again—those eyes that are bright like the etching on IXA's handle against the black lance, amber or honeyed or molten gold like the CCG pin he wears on his lapel.

He finds himself nodding. Silent, unknowing of what kind of answer she expected.

But she seems satisfied with him all the same, and when they pass each other on the narrow stone path, she sketches a bow with her lips still quirked. "Another day, then. We'll be expecting you."

* * *

Notes:

(1) The opening verse is from a translation of Antonio Machado's poem, "The Torn Cloud, the Rainbow," from which I also take this fic's title.


	3. 1,2

There is an alleyway. Angled sprays of blood on the walls, ghouls with holes where their heads had been; people cleaved in half. The bodies have been sitting in their crimson pools for a while, with the foul stench of rotting flesh in the air, and they carry signs of little, foregone attempts at regenerating the fatal wounds.

"Ghouls with high-velocity attacks," Arima remarks, "and an efficient way of killing."

They are what remains of a marauding gang of ghouls that his squad had been tasked with for merely a week—the group's approach of the 3rd ward had merited the assignment, though it's obvious with the massacre now on his hands that other people had also been watching.

Other, more dangerous ghouls _._

"Arima," his deputy squad leader is saying. "We've identified them. It's almost match for match with the whole group except for three people, including the leader, Taka."

Amid the overwhelming amount of _red_ that has managed to lodge itself everywhere, his deputy is the only member of his squad that actually manages to keep his usual expression, which happens to be a carefully blank face.

He wonders: the amount of restraint required to kill so quickly, and not in a protracted show of dominance, is uncommon for ghouls. It doesn't seem to have been a difficult battle, either—the last time the CCG had encountered such an organized group had been the raids on the 2nd ward.

Yet Owl had disappeared into the 24th ever since Kuroiwa had taken their arm. Could this mean they were resurfacing?

As it turns out, he need not have bothered.

"Up there!"

Quinques are unsheathed. His squad closes rank around him. Arima takes a careful step forward, eyes squinting at an old building's rooftop.

Crouched, with the glowing full moon as their halo, a figure watches from the roof's edge. Their body is gleaming onyx muscle from head to toe, and even their face is masked by the same black carapace; one long kagune tail is lifted above their head with the three missing gang members speared through the stomach, hanging lifeless and limp like dolls on a string.

The newcomer makes their move as Arima issues his orders: _wedge,_ he says, as the ghoul sprouts two more kagune tails. _Rinkaku!_ another of his squad members shouts, and before he can fire the first blast from Narukami, the ghoul has already leapt off the building, disappearing into the night.

* * *

They identify the ghoul later, through kagune secretions found on the rooftop. The alleyway had been bathed in too much blood to gather samples of anything other than the red substance.

 _Ghost_. A fitting moniker, given their quick departure from the scene, and the fact that—according to their profile—they've avoided capture or a pitched battle with the CCG for the 20 odd years their presence has been documented in Tokyo. With the massacre, the case is closed on the marauding ghoul band; the matter of Ghost's appearance is jotted in a report, and their reassignment to another case in the 15th ward is swift.

"They're not giving us the Ghost case?"

"That would require more deliberation," Arima busies himself with the leftover paperwork from that day's mission. He hands it to his deputy, then reaches for the umbrella he has stashed in a shelf on his office.

Hirako narrows his eyes as he grips the new folder in his hands. "You don't think they'll give it to us."

That actually makes him pause. "There's barely anything in Ghost's profile. It would take a considerable amount of effort for any squad to track them down."

"Any squad, maybe," his junior counters. "But they're not you, Arima."

Arima merely smiles.

* * *

Any other squad.

Any other investigator.

Any other ghoul.

This is the difference being the reaper of the CCG makes: that he has killed enough ghouls to paint entire wards in red, taken enough of their prized kagunes to arm an army of investigators—that his attention on a case usually ends in death, and his time is the most carefully rationed in the entire bureau.

In the swirling storm of faces in his head, Ghost's is simply any other. Come what may, he thinks, and let whatever things fall into place; as the sun sets and rises each day, blood will still be on his hands, no matter whose it is.

* * *

Akiko beams when he sticks his head in Sugi that night.

"Oh!" she says, turning away from a conversation she'd evidently been having with Megumi and another customer. A quick _I'll be back later, promise,_ is all she offers that customer before approaching him. "Lucky! I just came in myself a few minutes ago."

The kimono she's wearing today is powder pink in color, sunflowers painted on the fabric in vibrant yellows and whose outlines are in embroidered in gold. Even the matching gold flecks in her eyes seem to smile at his presence. "It's nice to see you again. Would you like a table?"

A murmured "yes, thank you," is all he can say against the strength of her friendly gaze. She leads him through a narrow hallway, where he gazes at the slope her shoulders make and the tips of her ears; her hair is pulled back into a low pony tail, swishing gently with each step.

"I don't think I've introduced myself," she is saying, "I'm Akiko. Megs's younger sister, if you have any trouble remembering." She tosses a teasing glance at him over her shoulder, which makes him pause momentarily—but she just chuckles at his surprise, and continues on to the main tearoom.

"I will say, I wasn't expecting you to be back so soon," she waves her hand at the same table he always takes, hands him a menu with a little curl to her lips. The room is empty, as he intended, save for the two of them. "Arima-san, wasn't it? My brother tells me you're a very good investigator with the CCG. I'm not surprised, considering when we first met, your boss told me you were the youngest in the force."

It would be impolite to do nothing. So he does what he thinks is the only thing he can—he nods obligingly at her unexpected praise, eyes all the while scanning the paper between his fingertips. Few people outside the CCG, he finds, really grasp the nature of their work. Few people are ever really fit to be investigators to begin with—to be able to readily kill something that walks, talks and acts human, but in fact is not. And to not only do it once; but to do it over and over again, as many times as it is necessary.

What would she say, if she knew anything of the world he inhabits? And that he was inducted into that world at the same time she was probably busy drinking tea and going to high school and laughing with her brother?

She's still smiling at him.

And his thoughts are drifting away like a bubble against the wind, a butterfly catching flight.

"Just some tea tonight," Arima says, with more words than necessary. _Matcha,_ he could've said. He has an excess of three syllables, but this is no place for that kind of razor-sharp precision, and he doesn't think she exactly cares. Her talkativeness, he finds, gives people ideas.

"Alright, then," she nods.

"Thank you," then he adds after a small pause, "Kobayashi-san."

Her face crumples a little, like she'd eaten something the slightest bit sour. "There are two Kobayashi-san's in this teahouse," she tilts her head at him playfully, "and that's not counting when my sister's around. Akiko is fine, Arima-san."

Then she gets up and leaves. Returns a few minutes later, with a tray in hand.

"I'm sure you know this already, but there's a button underneath the table, if you need anything more."

She bows a little. Winks. Actually _winks,_ as she waves a hand and begins to walk away. "Hmm, I can't promise that it'll be me again when you need something though, so this is farewell for now."

And that _is_ farewell for now; it's another girl that brings him his next cup—and when he drains that one, he pays and leaves with Megumi's goodbye and nothing more.

* * *

The teahouse is uncommonly full the next night he comes, and he is left to stand before the empty desk where Megumi usually is for a few minutes, wondering if there are any tables left for him, or if there is anyone to go check for him to begin with.

But she comes to rescue him from such pondering. Her kimono this time is black as night, more formal than usual. Her hair is swept up, a rather delicate looking hairpin stuck in her hair. The sight of him in Sugi's foyer stops her short, and a grin takes over her face.

"You didn't read the sign, didn't you?"

It's a non-standard greeting, even from her. Arima pauses. "There was one?"

"By the entrance. 'We will be closed on June 2nd for the Tokyo Shogi Association's 127th Anniversary Party.' That's today, you know."

At his silence, she laughs. "You didn't!"

Well—that poses a considerable problem to his plans. He had brought a book with him that night; he had hoped—

As if sensing his thought, she spies the book in his hand. "Were you planning to read?"

He nods.

"What's it about?"

"I...don't know," he confesses. "I haven't started it yet." Hence why he had gone to Sugi.

"You can, if you want. We're technically closed for the night, but I can probably bring you something from the party. You can read in my office. I'm headed back there anyway."

She says the last few words with a wriggling of her brow.

Again, she is guileless, and her words hold nothing but warmth; her offer is generous, too generous, he thinks, for an irregular patron that only comes at night. She seems to like him a lot, for someone she only meets in passing. Or does she? He can't figure it. She is perhaps just _too_ friendly to tell.

But there is tea, and the promise of quiet; her lightly teasing expression, and it makes him reconsider, for a few seconds, if there is any danger at all to saying yes. This is the 1st ward. This is _Sugi,_ of all places, and it's _her—_

"There are a bunch of books too, if you end up not liking the one you brought."

He nods without a second thought.

Her grin returns in full force as she claps her hands in excitement.

It's with that that he finds himself at the other side of the teahouse. Her office is directly across the tearoom, where the supposed party is happening; the garden sits in between, wisteria tree completely bereft of its purple flowers already.

Her office is a little bigger than he expects. It is packed, unsurprisingly, with store-bought file cabinets and corkboards with pinned papers; bookshelves stuffed with cracked spines and knickknacks, calligraphy scrolls and bonsai; jars filled with tealeaves, an old desk but a new set of chairs.

What catches his eye are the picture frames. Hung proudly on one wall, practically filling the entire space. They're all of a man with different people, all obviously taken in Sugi.

"Ah," she says as she catches him staring. "That's my dad. Kobayashi Jukichi. He used to run the teahouse with my brother. This used to be his office, in fact."

By her tone, he gathers her father is already gone. Her pained smile confirms this as she comes to stand beside him, gazing at the picture his eyes had settled on: her father is having a cup of tea with none other than Marude Itsuki. His former superior looks twenty years younger, and so does her father; Kobayashi Jukichi looks a bit like Megumi, with the stocky frame and black hair, and the two friends are both caught in the middle of laughter.

Distantly, he remembers such a man.

He had been more wrinkled, less hair, no less sunny. Arima was sixteen when he met him: the same night he visited Sugi for the first time. He loses the exact details, but somehow Arima _remembers_ him, how kind he had been, how welcoming—how he had spoken to him the entire night, before Marude had stolen him away and Arima had suddenly felt alone amongst a table of adults, so he had taken a step outside and…

"No one saw it coming," Akiko is still smiling, but her voice is subdued. "He's the real reason I came to Tokyo. Had to help with the family business and all that."

"I'm sorry for your loss," he offers. It's not much, and yet he feels compelled to say it all the same.

She looks at him in surprise. Eyes wide and glassy; for a moment he thinks she's going to cry, but she blinks, and blinks again. Like the second time they met each other. And like that time, she just quirks her lips, "Well, the world is what it is," and she bows her head. "But thank you."

* * *

She serves him some ordinary green tea, a little while later. Fresh from the kitchens, along with a few wagashi that had been meant for the party.

He looks at her a little differently, now: it seems so natural, the way she can serve him a cup of tea and sit down at her desk with a smile, even with reminders of her recently deceased father everywhere around her. She obviously cared about him a great deal.

"Are you a big reader, Arima-san?"

He cradles a teacup in his hands, apologizes a little as he sets his book down on her desk and pushes his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. "I read when I can." Which is about as truthful as it gets.

"You're reading a Takatsuki novel," she sits back in her chair, taking a whiff of her own teacup. "My friend tells me there are always people coming in to buy her books, no matter what time of the year."

He raises a brow. "Does your friend work in a bookshop?"

"He owns several." She replies. "He's always telling me," and here her voice drops an octave, obviously mimicking the voice of a man, " _'Oh Kicchan, you_ have _to try reading her books!_ '' except I can never seem to find the time. Will you tell me if you like the one you're reading now?"

"You would put my opinion over that of your friend's?"

Pleasantly, she chirps back, "No. I'll just add your opinion to the list of people who tell me I should read more."

"You don't read, then. These books," his gaze roams over the bookshelves in her office, "are all your father's."

"How clever! How did you know Megumi's just as uncultured as I am?"

And almost unwillingly, a corner of his mouth lifts in amusement.

"I wouldn't say you're uncultured," he calmly utters from behind his teacup. "To call the owners of a respectable teahouse uncultured would be rude, would it not?"

"Ha, it would be. You are too kind," she bows her head obligingly, "to be so considerate of a simple country bumpkin such as myself."

Huh. Akiko keeps a cheerfully straight face under his scrutiny—and yet he can't tell if she's serious or not.

"I was raised in Kyoto. Not the city, either," she offers.

"Ah."

"It's good breeding on my part, people are rarely able to tell," she smiles, "thank goodness, right? I confused people every time I visited Tokyo and opened my mouth."

He hums. "I would hardly call Kyoto…"

"Hush now, Arima-san. Don't ruin the joke."

And he does, though it's not without the twitching of his lips, and her serenely sipping at her tea.

* * *

A different week finds him and his squad knee-deep in an extermination campaign in the 11th ward.

Upon recognizing Arima's presence, their targets attempt to lose them by fleeing into the underside of an overpass. The operation ends up being less clean than he likes: the busy highway overhead is nearly deafening, and even without the noise, the vast columns of concrete that support the structure interfere with their communications. The visibility in a neglected area such as this is poor, at best—and try as he might to factor in these inconveniences to their method of attack, they still rendezvous out of the underpass with two squad members short.

Someone else is also on the other side.

Perched on a streetlight, watching, waiting like a raven surveying a bloody battlefield. A thick tendril of liquid muscle protruding from their back lowers something into view, and Arima actually _stops_ , as he realizes its his _deputy squad leader_ being set back on the ground not forty-five feet before them.

" _ **One of your flock**_."

Their voice carries the same distortion a kakuja mask bestows. As if two completely different people speaking, one just milliseconds after the other, unsettling and unnatural—and yet completely, utterly calm.

Two squad members rush to secure Hirako, Narukami's bolts providing ample cover for them. With a leap and a twist through the air, Ghost shields itself from the attack with the kagune tail they'd already had out.

It disintegrates right before their eyes not soon after, but that's an easy sacrifice for a rinkaku ghoul with a kakuja; with the time that loss has bought, Ghost has already made it on the ground and broken into a run, closing the gap between them and the rest of his squad.

In a burst of speed, the ghoul veers a sharp left, avoiding Arima himself—

— _An attack?_ IXA materializes in his grip—with sustained fire from Narukami, the kakuja probably would've fallen to pieces eventually, but he hasn't the luxury of testing this theory—one of his squad members is still missing, Ghost is already engaging another, and he isn't at all keen to lose anyone else on this mission—

 _Smart,_ he thinks, for the ghoul to take advantage of their disorganized rendezvous, and obstruct Narukami's line of fire with the bodies of his own squad members.

He gives his orders to withdraw, but his squad members are still only human, and there is that lag between his issuance and actual action; Ghost is ducking under the swings of their quinques and easily batting aside others—by the time Arima has enough space to maneuver, the ghoul easily dodges IXA's first thrust.

They're retracted their kagune and they're smaller than they appear, up close: the kakuja is black as sin itself, completely covering the ghoul head-to-toe as a series of shining, compact plates. They slide and reshape seamlessly against each other as Ghost sidesteps another of IXA's thrusts, careful to keep its tip away.

Carefully, Arima feigns an attempt at puncturing this armor. The ghoul skillfully twists away, but right into a flurry of bolts from Narukami that he had fired at the same time; the plates on Ghost's left arm momentarily course and crackle with yellow lightning, but they don't even flinch—just as quick, their kagune blooms again to encase their wielder from the RC bolts. One more tail fizzles away in the air between them, four more still remain to protect the ghoul. Two last tails launch them up, and up they go, flying backwards through the air and landing on the overpass without fail.

Then there is only the elusive Ghost looking down on him again, a splotch of black against a dizzying backdrop of speeding trucks and cars and sickly white highway lights. There are two protrusions like fox ears on Ghost's helmeted head, along with a short muzzle whose jaws interlock with jagged fangs.

Two vast, soulless eyes stare down at him.

Of course, there are no parting words. Just the ghoul swiftly disappearing again as they leap over the traffic.

Arima blinks.

Ghost really _is_ gone.

And for the first time there is sweat pooling on his forehead, sweat he distractedly wipes away as he sheathes his quinques and cleans his glasses. When he pushes the spectacles up the bridge of his nose and gaze at the overpass, the ghoul that had been there only moments before refuses to reappear.

 _Gone,_ he has to tell himself again.

Then he turns, and all eyes are on Hirako, and the two squad members who had rushed to help him while the rest had engaged the ghoul. There's already a makeshift tourniquet for a wound in the deputy's arm, but that doesn't seem to stop the man from absently clutching the bandages all the same.

"Torimi?"

"Dead," The wounded man replies instantly. Arima nods, more curious about the deep disquiet in Hirako's tone.

"We were surrounded—Torimi was alread— _already gone,_ but. But they came. _Ghost._ I—I don't understand why, but..."

Hirako doesn't usually bother himself with such roundabout ways of speaking, using oblique words like _gone_ when he could just as easily say _ripped to shreds_ or _eaten alive_ or simply even _dead_ again, and he would still be hewing closer to the truth.

Funny, Arima should think.

This is the first time he's ever heard of a ghoul slaughtering other ghouls for an investigator's sake.

This is the first he's ever lost a squad member.

Voices. Babble, in the background. Everyone seems to have fallen in shocked conversation around him, and yet he finds himself gazing up at the moon.

This is the world he lives in.

* * *

 _It is what it is_ , a familiar voice sounds in the back of his head.

* * *

Notes:

Given that your objective isn't to, say, actually _fight_ Arima, I think it's entirely plausible for a ghoul to survive an encounter with him. Thanks as always to readers.


End file.
